The design of high power UV laser systems is limited to a large extent by the laser-initiated damage performance of transmissive fused silica optical components. The 3{omega} (i.e., the third harmonic of the primary laser frequency) damage growth mitigation LDRD effort focused on understanding and reducing the rapid growth of laser-initiated surface damage on fused silica optics. Laser-initiated damage can be discussed in terms of two key issues: damage initiated at some type of precursor and rapid damage growth of the damage due to subsequent laser pulses. The objective of the LDRD effort has been the elucidation of laser-induced damage processes in order to quantify and potentially reduce the risk of damage to fused silica surfaces. The emphasis of the first two years of this effort was the characterization and reduction of damage initiation. In spite of significant reductions in the density of damage sites on polished surfaces, statistically some amount of damage initiation should always be expected. The early effort therefore emphasized the development of testing techniques that quantified the statistical nature of damage initiation on optical surfaces. This work led to the development of an optics lifetime modeling strategy that has been adopted by the NIF project to …

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The 2000 U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) Environmental Management (EM) Waste and Materials Disposition “Transportation Challenges” report is provided as an update to or status report on the transportation “barriers” analysis conducted in October 1999 and published in November 1999 as the National Transportation Program (NTP) Transportation Challenges “Problems Tied to Disposition Pathways.” Much of the programmatic information concerning the “barriers” or, more accurately, “issues,” has not changed since the first publication; however, efforts to resolve the issues have progressed to varying degrees over the last year. This report provides a current status of efforts to eliminate or mitigate the issues, and includes new issues identified since the original analyses were conducted. Resolving these issues will increase the probability of successful waste and materials disposition and decrease the likelihood of delays due to inadequate transportation resources or infrastructure. The issues addressed in this report generally affect more than one site and more than one waste or material stream.

On September 28, 2000, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the drug mifepristone, also known as RU-486, for the termination of early pregnancy. Because RU-486 is an abortion agent, the process of moving it out of the lab and into mainstream medicine has been fraught with controversy. Since its discovery, the pro-life movement has been adamantly against the use of this drug for abortion. This report discusses the procedure of obtaining and using the drug, as well as the ongoing debate regarding its usage and related legislation.

Drift seepage refers to flow of liquid water into repository emplacement drifts, where it can potentially contribute to degradation of the engineered systems and release and transport of radionuclides within the drifts. Because of these important effects, seepage into emplacement drifts is listed as a ''principal factor for the postclosure safety case'' in the screening criteria for grading of data in Attachment 1 of AP-3.15Q, Rev. 2, ''Managing Technical Product Inputs''. Abstraction refers to distillation of the essential components of a process model into a form suitable for use in total-system performance assessment (TSPA). Thus, the purpose of this analysis/model is to put the information generated by the seepage process modeling in a form appropriate for use in the TSPA for the Site Recommendation. This report also supports the Unsaturated-Zone Flow and Transport Process Model Report. The scope of the work is discussed below. This analysis/model is governed by the ''Technical Work Plan for Unsaturated Zone Flow and Transport Process Model Report'' (CRWMS M&O 2000a). Details of this activity are in Addendum A of the technical work plan. The original Work Direction and Planning Document is included as Attachment 7 of Addendum A. Note that the Work Direction and Planning …

A new cryostat cooled by a closed-cycle Cryomech GB-37 cryocooler for superconductor measurements at temperatures down to 20 K is described. The sample is conductively coupled to the cold stage so as to minimize vibration and thermal stresses. AC losses have been measured calorimetrically in several HTSC coils that have been wound to simulate sub-scale transformer winding pairs. Stable temperatures down to 20 K were reached on these coils, allowing measurements at practical levels of ac current and I{sub c}. By using short ac current pulses, losses on individual turns could be resolved. Results are reported mainly to showcase the apparatus, measurement procedure and analytical approach.

When Fluor Fernald took over the management of the Fernald Environmental Management Project in 1992, the estimated closure date of the site was more than 25 years into the future. Fluor Fernald, in conjunction with DOE-Fernald, introduced the Accelerated Cleanup Plan, which was designed to substantially shorten that schedule and save taxpayers more than $3 billion. The management of Fluor Fernald believes there are three fundamental concerns that must be addressed by any contractor hoping to achieve closure of a site within the DOE complex. They are relationship management, resource management and contract management. Relationship management refers to the interaction between the site and local residents, regulators, union leadership, the workforce at large, the media, and any other interested stakeholder groups. Resource management is of course related to the effective administration of the site knowledge base and the skills of the workforce, the attraction and retention of qualified a nd competent technical personnel, and the best recognition and use of appropriate new technologies. Perhaps most importantly, resource management must also include a plan for survival in a flat-funding environment. Lastly, creative and disciplined contract management will be essential to effecting the closure of any DOE site. Fluor Fernald, together with …

This paper addresses the design of a system intended to readout multiparametric information from a matrix of pixels. The system presented here acquires the charge associated with the signal and provides a timing information from each pixel. Although it lends itself to a broad range of time-correlated imaging situations involving any kind of pixel matrices, the design constraints assumed here are particularly tailored to the application with pixels that sense the output charge distribution from a Micro Channel Plate (MCP). The combination of a microchannel plate and a pixel matrix is an extremely versatile detector and the readout system must be able to fully exploit the intrinsically high position resolution and time accuracy featured by the MCP. The behavior of the readout system described in this paper is based upon advanced concepts to meet the above application requirements and is believed to provide a significant functional improvement over the conventional pixel systems.

An adaptive path planning algorithm is presented for cooperating Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs) that are used to deploy and operate land-based sensor networks. The algorithm employs a global cost function to generate paths for the UAVs, and adapts the paths to exceptions that might occur. Examples are provided of the paths and adaptation.

This paper gives estimates of the externalities associated with the increased likelihood of health and environmental impacts that result from exposure to pollutants emitted by electric power plants in South Carolina. A new method for estimating externalities is developed, results are presented, and policy-related implications are discussed. The results suggest that the environmental externalities are noteworthy and would affect electricity consumption if they are internalized and passed on to consumers in the rates they are charged. Yet, if the externalities are internalized, they are not so great that they would dramatically alter the fuel mix in the state in the immediate future. Two policy options are discussed: incentives or disincentives for new merchant power plants and emissions permit trading.

The primary objective of the Advanced Emissions Control Development Program (AECDP) is to develop practical, cost-effective strategies for reducing the emissions of hazardous air pollutants (HAPs, or air toxics) from coal-fired boilers. The project goal is to effectively control air toxic emissions through the use of conventional flue gas cleanup equipment such as electrostatic precipitators (ESPs), fabric filters (baghouses), and wet flue gas desulfurization (WFGD) systems. Development work initially concentrated on the capture of trace metals, fine particulate, hydrogen chloride, and hydrogen fluoride. Recent work has focused almost exclusively on the control of mercury emissions.

Programs at LLNL that involve large laser systems--ranging from the National Ignition Facility to new tactical laser weapons--depend on the maintenance of laser beam quality through precise control of the optical wavefront. This can be accomplished using adaptive optics, which compensate for time-varying aberrations that are often caused by heating in a high-power laser system. Over the past two decades, LLNL has developed a broad capability in adaptive optics technology for both laser beam control and high-resolution imaging. This adaptive optics capability has been based on thin deformable glass mirrors with individual ceramic actuators bonded to the back. In the case of high-power lasers, these adaptive optics systems have successfully improved beam quality. However, as we continue to extend our applications requirements, the existing technology base for wavefront control cannot satisfy them. To address this issue, this project studied improved modeling tools to increase our detailed understanding of the performance of these systems, and evaluated novel approaches to low-order wavefront control that offer the possibility of reduced cost and complexity. We also investigated improved beam control technology for high-resolution wavefront control. Many high-power laser systems suffer from high-spatial-frequency aberrations that require control of hundreds or thousands of phase points to …

The authors examine the task of pixel-by-pixel classification of the multispectral and grayscale images typically found in remote-sensing and medical applications. Simple machine learning techniques have long been applied to remote-sensed image classification, but almost always using purely spectral information about each pixel. Humans can often outperform these systems, and make extensive use of spatial context to make classification decisions. They present AFREET: an SVM-based learning system which attempts to automatically construct and refine spatio-spectral features in a somewhat human-inspired fashion. Comparisons with traditionally used machine learning techniques show that AFREET achieves significantly higher performance. The use of spatial context is particularly useful for medical imagery, where multispectral images are still rare.

Laboratory data are presented on the effect of constant-temperature aging on the apparent thermal conductivity of polyurethane foam insulation for refrigerators and freezers. The foam specimens were blown with HCFC-141b and with three of its potential replacements--HFC-134a, HFC-245fa, and cyclopentane. Specimens were aged at constant temperatures of 90 F, 40 F, and {minus}10 F. Thermal conductivity measurements were made on two types of specimens: full-thickness simulated refrigerator panels containing foam enclosed between solid plastic sheets, and thin slices of core foam cut from similar panels. Results are presented for the first two years of a multi-year aging study. Preliminary comparisons of measured data with predictions of a mathematical aging model are presented.

This list provides a sampling of the rapidly proliferating number of agricultural resources available on the Internet. It is not intended to be exhaustive. It is divided into 24 main categories and 15 subcategories.

Periodic bulletin issued by the Texas Department of Health providing information and guidance regarding regulations around the use and abatement of asbestos. This issue clarifies confusion on whether or not a Air Monitoring Technician can be employed to take personal air samples for evaluation potential worker exposures.

This report discusses electronic warfare (EW) as an effective technique for increasing aircraft and aircrew survivability in hostile environments, which in turn improves the overall effectiveness of the air campaign.

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In May 2000, United Airlines proposed acquiring US Airways and divesting part of those assets to create a new airline to be called DC Air. More recently, American Airlines has proposed buying Trans World Airlines (TWA), along with certain assets from United. These proposals have raised questions about how such consolidation within the airline industry could affect competition in general and consumers in particular. Congress, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Transportation need to answer several questions in evaluating the proposed mergers. For example, questions remain about whether American's purchase of financially-strapped TWA represents the last anticompetitive means to preserve its assets. The proposals by American, TWA, United, US Airways, and DC Air constitute the most significant recent changes that have occurred in the airline industry, and the outcome of these decisions could have both positive and negative effects for consumers for years to come. This testimony summarizes a December report (GAO-01-212)."

A statement of record issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In May 2000, United Airlines proposed to acquire US Airways and divest part of those assets to create a new airline to be called DC Air. More recently, American Airlines has proposed buying Trans World Airlines (TWA), along with certain assets from United. These proposals have raised questions about how such consolidation in the airline industry could affect competition in general and consumers in particular. Congress, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Transportation need to answer several questions in evaluating the proposed mergers. The proposals by American, TWA, United, US Airways, and DC Air constitute the most significant recent changes that have occured in the airline industry, and the outcome of these decisions could have both positive and negative effects for consumers for years to come. This testimony summarized a December GAO report (GAO-01-212)."

An account of alternative fuel vehicle usage and success highlighting three major airports.

This issue brief discusses the Airport Improvement Program and its complement, the Passenger Facility Charge (PFC). After a brief history of federal support for airport construction and improvement, the report describes AIP funding, its source of revenues, the impact of the Wendell H. Ford Aviation Investment and Reform Act for the 21st Century (FAIR21, P.L. 106-181), funding distribution, the types of projects the program funds, and AIP and PFC policy issues.

Two optimum defocus conditions are used in high-resolution transmission electron microscopy. Scherzer defocus produces an image of the specimen ''projected potential'' to the resolution of the microscope, and Lichte defocus minimizes dispersion. A third optimum defocus is best for focal-series reconstruction; alpha-null defocus maximizes transfer of high-frequency diffracted beam amplitudes into the microscope image. Beam transfer is confined by incident-beam convergence to a Gaussian ''packet'' of defocus values centered on the alpha-null defocus. For a diffracted beam hkl, with a spatial frequency of u, the envelope for incident beam convergence has null damping effect when defocus is set to -Cs. (wavelength.u)**2. On either side of this alpha-null defocus value, the damping effect of incident-beam convergence reduces diffracted-beam transfer. The position of alpha-null defocus for any spatial frequency depends only on the value of Cs, but defocus-packet width around the alpha-null defocus depends only on the convergence semi-angle. Under NCEM OAM (one-Angstrom microscope) conditions, a [110] diamond image with the correct 0.89A spacing appears when the Si (004) alpha-null defocus is selected. The alpha-null defocus should be included as the (furthest underfocus) limit for all high-resolution focal series reconstruction.

Alternative Fuel News, an ongoing quarterly publication for the U.S. Department of Energy. An official publication of the Clean Cities Network and the Alternative Fuels Data Center.

In December 2000, a performance monitoring facility was constructed adjacent to the U-3ax/bl mixed waste disposal unit at the Nevada Test Site (NTS). Recent studies conducted in the arid southwestern United States suggest that a vegetated monolayer evapotranspiration (ET) closure cover may be more effective at isolating waste than traditional Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) multi-layered designs. The monitoring system deployed next to the U-3ax/bl disposal unit consists of eight drainage lysimeters with three surface treatments: two are left bare; two are revegetated with native species; two are being allowed to revegetate with invader species; and two are reserved for future studies. Soil used in each lysimeter is native alluvium taken from the same location as the soil used for the cover material on U-3ax/bl. The lysimeters were constructed so that any drainage to the bottom can be collected and measured. To provide a detailed evaluation of the cover performance, an ar ray of 16 sensors was installed in each lysimeter to measure soil water content, soil water potential, and soil temperature. Revegetation of the U-3ax/bl closure cover establishes a stable plant community that maximizes water loss through transpiration while at the same time, reduces water and wind erosion …